Monsters under the bed. Monsters in the closet. Monsters in the woods. Sea monsters. Otherworldly monsters. When we want to drive home how horrible a person’s actions are, we call them a monster. The old explorers and cartographers marked off unexplored areas with the ominous phrase, “Here there be monsters.” We reminisce fondly about the classic monster movies of the 1930s and ’40s. Monsters, man. They’re everywhere.

We never outgrew the monsters of our childhood. They just moved from the closet to our reading materials. So I’ve put together a list of 100 monster stories, organized by type (or breed, if you will) for your reading pleasure.

A couple notes about this list: I tried to stick as close to horror & dark fantasy as I could, and I chose not to include a lot of well-known titles & authors on this list, because we all know Dracula and Frankenstein and Cujo. Hopefully you’ll find something new here!